Your previous post seems to indicate that you would be interested in my work on ‘Religionless Christianity’. Just email me at hwhy_neb@hotmail.com and I’ll send you a copy. Would love your feedback.

I am not enough of a Bonhoeffer scholar to argue that Religionless Christianity has deep roots in his previous work. However I am hoping that you can show me it is! I am very keen to show that his work on religionless Christianity is luminous and important rather than marginal.

Thanks

In reading through this blog it has become apparent to me that the general concensus is that ‘Religionless Christianity’ was some particular concept Bonhoeffer just happened to be playing with near the end of his life. Though some do seem to give it slightly weightier significance. I would, however, like to suggest that the roots of this concept go back to the very beginning of Bonhoeffer’s theological career; back to His dissertations and beyond. I have in fact recently written a brief dissertation on the topic which traces the foundations of this concept from His ‘teachers’ all the way through His writings and have come to the conclusion that Bonhoeffer was on the cusp of making this his defining ‘umbrella’ concept for all of his previous theo-philosophical assertions. While it is a humble treatise and probably does not measure up to your learned writing skills, I believe it can add to if not inform the discussion. While I realize that this blog has not been written in for some time now and none of you may even receive this entry or be interested; if any of you ARE interested in reading it please let me know. (It doesn’t seem practical to post the whole thing here). My email address is hwhy_neb@hotmail.com I would be extremely greatful for your feedback, criticism and/or discussion. Below is a teaser by way of my proposal for a concluding definition of ‘Religionless Christianity’ which I support and defend throughout the meat of the paper.

‘Religionless Christianity’ Defined

‘Religionless Christianity’ was in the process of being designed by Bonhoeffer as an umbrella term under which to radically redefine terms like ‘Christianity’, ‘Christian, ‘Church’ and ‘Religion’. It was the product of the whole of his lifelong theological and philosophical inquiry, arising finally from his dual realizations that the world had ‘come of age’, making religion superfluous, and that the Church had failed in its God-given purposes precisely because of its entanglement with ‘religion’.

‘Religionless Christianity’ was intended, by Bonhoeffer, to galvanize his assertion of the hostile, antithetical nature inherent between the ‘Church’, which ‘acted’ as a continuing ‘dialectic’ form of revelation of both God and ‘real’ humanity; and ‘religion’ or ‘religious community’, which ‘judged’, standing over and against the Church proper as a form and propagator of its non-existence. It was meant, then, to distinguish Christianity from its heritage of and as ‘religion’; thus, liberating it and setting faith and salvation free so that a correct and unsullied ‘costly grace’ gospel– which proclaimed the temporal embracing, promoting and embodying of Christ’s self-sacrifice, weakness and vicarious suffering as essential factors for true repentance, faith and freedom – could find realization, both in thought and practice.

‘Religionless Christianity’, therefore, meant an utter rejection of religion as ‘the heart turned inward on itself’; as metaphysical and individualistic inner reflection and conscience. It meant a rejection of religion’s use of God as the ‘deus ex machina’; its denunciation of the ‘worldly’ in deference to the ‘beyond’; and its ‘cheap grace’ gospel. It, moreover, meant the rejection of all static ethical systems as Pharisaical judgment concerning ‘good’ and ‘evil’ rather than timely, responsible action as Christ.

‘Religionless Christianity’ meant maintaining intellectual honesty, quite irreligiously, by interacting with the world, in light of the gospel’s ‘weakness’, according to the world’s chosen terms, ‘esti deus non daretur’, from the position of servant. It meant speaking in terms that the world could engage with, and thus, it meant a ‘religionless’ re-interpretation of all Christian theological concepts, leading to a renewed understanding of theology and ethics consistent with the ‘this-worldly’ emphasis of the Old Testament. It meant, in fact, the reevaluation and adaptation of all Christian theology and ethics in terms of Bonhoeffer’s assertion of their indivisible nature, as ‘Theo-ethics’.

‘Religionless Christianity’, furthermore, meant a return of the Church to a primal, pre-fall, ‘worldly’ community. It meant the wholehearted embracing of ‘worldliness’, with all its pleasures and pains, by the Church as simply ‘the world in its conformed state’, a subset within the world community, through the auspices of Christ’s incarnation having made God and the world, the ‘Realm of God’, inseparable. It meant the complete unification of one’s ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ identities as a realization of the Christian’s con-formation into Christ’s ‘world’ validating incarnational image. It meant, then, that Church and religion, and not Church and world, are antithetical.

Finally, ‘Religionless Christianity’ meant the ‘free’, ‘faithful’ and ‘social’ re-presenting of Christ’s reconciling incarnational love, which was the basis of all ‘reality’, to the world. It meant the temporal acting out of the ‘Will of God’, which lay beyond ‘good’ or ‘evil’, as Christ incarnate, toward the ‘other I’. It, therefore, meant ‘living the life of Jesus Christ’; ‘doing’ the reconciliation of mankind with God its Origin in concrete historical circumstances through the situationally subjective objective truths contained within Christ’s incarnationality, according to the concepts contained within the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. It meant responsible and righteous ‘vicarious representative action’ on behalf of both God and mankind, under the covering of God’s indispensible grace, through faith, which provides forgiveness for and solace within the consequences of such sin-bearing vicarious actions. It meant a confessing Church, not a sinless one, which sought not ‘success’ but justification and sanctification; to be righteous, not ‘good’. It meant Christology centered ‘Theo-ethics’; it meant ‘Christo-ethics’.

A Concise Definition

‘Religionless Christianity’, then, can rightfully be described as Bonhoeffer’s culminating, all-inclusive term for his religion rejecting; return to the primal state avowing; ‘Theo-ethical’; dialectical; ‘reality’ actualizing; non-religious interpreting; world respecting and embracing; whole person affirming; ‘costly grace’ gospel asserting; static ethical system abandoning; incarnation re-presenting; vicarious representative acting; ‘Christo-ethic’.

‘Religionless Christianity’ is ‘Christo-ethics’. ‘Religionless Christianity’ exists exclusively in Christologically inspired, situational, ‘vicarious representative action’ and this is the very thing that justifies it as a ‘Christo-ethical’ term.